Lynch Nation Documentary Screening and Discussion on March 1

March 1, 4:00 pm - 6:00 pm

Please join us for a screening of the documentary, Lynch Nation, directed by Shaheen Ahmed and Ashfaque Ej. This event includes a discussion of a Human Rights Watch report on cow protection violence in India (view the report here). The discussion and a Q&A session will be lead by Jayshree Bajoria, author of the report, and Suchitra Vijayan, Director of The Polis Project.

Directed by Shaheen Ahmed and Ashfaque EJ, Lynch Nation is a crowd-funded documentary that travels across the country, to places where such communally colored and casteist lynchings have taken place, reconstructing them through the accounts of the victims’ friends and family. View the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjBRlRX9Oq8

About Jayshree Bajoria

Jayshree Bajoria is the author of the new Human Rights Watch report “Violent Cow Protection in India: Vigilante Groups Attack Minorities,” released in February 2019. She has worked on numerous issues in India including right to education, freedom of expression and assembly, discrimination against marginalized communities, violence against children and women, police abuse, and access to justice. She has previously worked as the deputy editor at CFR.org, the website of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, where she wrote on international security, terrorism, nonproliferation, human rights, and development issues in Asia. She co-wrote and produced two award-winning interactive multimedia pieces, Crisis Guide: Iran which won an Emmy and Crisis Guide: Pakistan. Bajoria has also worked as a reporter for the BBC and the Indian Express newspaper in Mumbai, India. She has a master’s in international affairs from Columbia University in New York and a diploma in journalism from Xavier Institute of Communications in Mumbai.

About Suchitra Vijayan

Suchitra Vijayan is a writer, lawyer, photographer, and political analyst and the founding director of Project Polis. Vijayan previously worked for the UN war crimes tribunal for Yugoslavia and Rwanda. She co-founded and was the legal director of Resettlement Legal Aid Project, Cairo, which provided legal aid for Iraqi refugees in Egypt. Vijayan was also embedded with ISAF forces in Afghanistan conducting research on key kinetic terrains in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. She is currently working on The Borderlands Project, a travelogue chronicling stories and politics along India’s borders.